Corky: Surf meet finds most still kicking

I remember back in the late 1960's they used to have these great get-togethers that were happily called "love ins." They were wonderful and friendly party-like events with lots of colors, bubble blowing and affectionate babes all over the place.

These festivities usually involved some sort of concert or music. The most famous of these events took place in San Francisco at Golden Gate Park. These were the "happening" love-ins and you could always hear the word "wow" being uttered in almost any and every conversation.

There are those who say if you were at one of these and remember it then you weren't actually there.

Anyway, this brings me to this week's little story. Last Saturday I attended the Longboard Collectors Club annual surfboard swap meet and inductions into the Surfboard Builders Hall of Fame at Doheny State Park in beautiful Dana Point.

When I was strolling into the event with my beautiful wife, Raquel, I had this intense flashback that I was walking into a present-day surfing version of a vintage "love in." Only it was more like a surf-in and this was "Golden Teeth Park." The average age was close to triple digits yet the vibe was close to or exactly the same as one of the Golden Gate Park affairs.

There was color and happiness everywhere, and the warm glow of friendliness and camaraderie filled your senses. It was like a Grateful Dead concert without the incense and the Grateful Dead.

That said, there where a ton of great surf dudes, some legends and so many people that I recognized their faces but could not for the life of me (what there is left anyway) could remember their names. What's up with that? I was talking to one guy for like 20 minutes without ever realizing he used to be my next door neighbor.

Everybody got much older than me, even guys way younger. At least that's the way I saw it and I am sticking with that point of view in spite of heavy evidence to the contrary.

My great friend Mickey "the Mongoose" Munoz was there with his normal great smile and laugh despite just twanging his knee in a snowboard accident. Don't you love guys 75 years old having snowboard accidents? I do. I love that guy, he is surfing the best in his life and is more stoked than 10 of your average groms put together.

Former World Champion Peter "PT" Townend was there. He gets the award for the dude who attends the most fun events worldwide each year. PT is a joy and a pure surfer from head to toe. He was a former "Golden Aussie," but I'm not sure how many gold teeth he is sporting. Must be a few, though.

Richard Chew was there along with his longtime surfboard builder Richard Harbour. Doug Haut, the ultra cool surfboard builder and Santa Cruz coldwater for 60-plus years survivor, was looking younger than his age and was very stoked. Both Larry Gordon and Floyd Smith of Gordon and Smith Surfboards were on hand and Floyd got inducted into the Builders Hall of Fame.

The induction ceremony was really fun. Bob "the Greek" Bolen and "Mickey Rat" Ester were the announcers. It's funny when you get a herd of legends and innovators together – many claims of being the "first" or "inventor" or "originator" of some thing or another always get thrown out there. These claims seemed to keep coming up during the inductions, some maybe true and some maybe not. I can't really say one way or another.

But what I loved was that as the Greek was reading these introductions, he seemed to have this great, possibly tongue in cheek, tone in his delivery. His talk had a "this is total malarkey but I gotta read it anyway" vibe about it. Very respectful, yet you knew he wasn't buying all of it.

All that stuff is just a great entertaining part of this kind of deal. You ought to hear infamous surfboard builder Dick Brewer claim full glory to everything ever invented just like he actually believes it himself. Maybe he does? Nonetheless, it's all part of the rich pageantry.

Speaking of rich pageantry, even Mr. Classicsurf.com himself, the ever-chubby H. Allan Seymour, was in attendance.

It was a really great event and I came away from it totally stoked that I had been there and that I was, like all those other dudes there, still alive and vertical. And most of us still have a decent bite, gold teeth or no.